New Cider - and newbie

Hi -

This autumn we tried our first homebrew cider. In fact, it was our first homebrew anything. Forgive me if I don't know any of the right terms...

Went to the local brewer supply to get yeast and a bucket, then off to the local cider mill to get some of the good stuff (local, NC apples). For about a week and a half there was all kinds of emissions from the trap on top of the bucket... now it's only bubbling like once every couple of hours... maybe even less.

It's only been ten days, tho, so I don't expect it to be done.

Is this normal? Something wrong?

I've got lots of time with the current crop to go back to the cider mill and get more so I'm not stressed yet

Any advice would be welcomed.

- Huw

That would be your secondary fermentation going. Nothing to worry about, your yeasties are just busilly turning the apple sugar into carbon dioxide and alcohol.

I just made my first cider from four 1 gallon bottles of organic apple juice I bought at the grocery store. They were dumped into a bucket and champagne yeast were added. fermentation was complete after 10 days. Racked/transfered to a secondary fermenter and added 4 cups of corn sugar to try and sweeten the batch. Now its just aging in the secondary fermenter till I decide what to do with it, bottle or keg. I'm clueless as to how it will taste. My beer is always good but this is a bit different. I made some mead once that turned out really good. It aged about 3 years in the bottle and tastes like champagne.

If you used champagne yeast, that corn sugar is gonna get eaten up, increasing your ABV, not the sweetness or flavor.....

I didn't think about that. Well, I hope it turns out to at least be drinkable.

S.O.B. said:

I didn't think about that. Well, I hope it turns out to at least be drinkable.

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It will be fine, just dont drink it too soon. I let my cider sit for atleast 3 months after it's bottled befor I consinder let someone else taste it

If you want it to be a still cider, you can just add a couple of campden tabs, give it 12-ish hours, and then add sugar to sweeten to taste.

If you want it to carb later, I think you can use lactose to ferment it. I've never done it, but lactose is unfermentable, so adding it should sweeten it without raising your ABV (or causing bottle bombs... hooray!).